Octo-Oneshots

A/N- Sooooo, after a long hiatus, I have returned: Alive, safe, and healthy. 

At 13, Koshi expected to have a big, beautiful office at the top of a skyscraper all to herself once she became a published author. At 23, she lay propped against a pile of cushions that reeked of Chinese takeout, staring at a grimy laptop screen while Bad Religion made her head fuzzy. She looked up and sighed.

"Jane! It's a wonder your music hasn't gotten us evicted." She surveyed the tiny studio apartment with a bathroom that they shared with marvelously unsanitary neighbors. Imagine if they got kicked out of this shithole. Jane spun around in her chair and Koshi could make out the screen-induced glaze of her sister's dancing blue eyes. 

"They didn't kick Ammon out for smoking weed. They sure aren't going to give us the boot for a little music." Koshi scowled. Jane had a point. Their apartment block had a reputation for being "Hippie Land" as Pinto very eloquently put it. It was a sanctuary for the bohemian, an oasis for a troubled artist. Unfortunately for Koshi, her art was very often troubled by the lack of regulation on said apartment block. It was as if 10 million Pintos surrounded her at any given moment. Pinto. A tsunami of melancholy crashed over her. Neither she nor Jane had seen him since Christmas. And Squirt... he had been her best friend for over a decade. He decided to stay at school over Winter Break. She nearly forgot what he looked like. 

But as the Fates would have it, Jane's phone rang, and Koshi mildly registered her annoyed growl as the tinny chime insistently prodded her away from her animation tablet.

"What do you want?" Jane sighed, rubbing her forehead. As the voice on the other end spoke, she froze in her tracks. "Oh, what are you doing there? Doesn't sound like your kind of place." Koshi began to tune out the conversation. It was probably one of her animation friends that was in town, then the sound of her name caused her to perk up once more. "Yeah, I'll get Koshi. We'll pick you up."

"What-" Before Koshi could get out another word, Jane unloaded an Odyssey-length tale of the Octopod being docked by Fisherman's Wharf and Pinto and Squirt trying to visit them in San Francisco using an address Jane had posted on Twitter as her "Home Away From Home", but the address Jane had posted led them to a punk club that she frequented. Pinto had gotten drunk out of his wits, Squirt was too afraid to drive them anywhere and they needed rescuing. By the time she finished, Koshi was speechless. "I- I- He was dumb enough to follow Pinto?!"

Jane scoffed, "Seems like it. We don't have a car, and the Proletariat doesn't let people take  drunks via public transport. What do we do?"

Koshi smirked. "Get a cardboard box and paint it to look like a car." Jane's sarcasm was rubbing off on her. She thought for a second: "What would Dashi do?" Using her own judgement, she would've left them at said punk club all night as punishment for their stupidity, but Dashi would've likely been kinder, therefore Dashi's judgement was superior.

Jane leapt out of her chair so quickly it toppled onto the floor. "Wait! You know the guy on the ground floor? The one who asked you out on a date?"

Koshi recoiled. "Yes."

"He has a car."

"Your point being?"

"If you asked, he'd do anything for you."

Koshi felt an inexplicable urge to vomit. "You disgust me."

Jane's voice took on a whiny, pleading tone Koshi hadn't heard since they were children. "Oh, come on, sis, please? Don't you love Squirt enough to talk to a gross guy that likes you?"

20 minutes later, Koshi was driving a Ford that seemed to be older than San Francisco itself, and Jane was in the passenger seat, happy as a clam with plenty of videos of Koshi getting "rizzed up" as the kids would say, by a Afghan Hound so high on catnip that he thought Jane was a boy.

"We're here." Koshi proclaimed, a little more grumpily than usual. "Lead the way... Saumensch." 

Jane grinned that same cheeky grin that she had since she was a puppy. "Koshi, welcome home." She pushed open the door to reveal a dingy, badly-lit bar, and as Koshi's keen detective eyes scanned the room, they fell on a black and white figure, taller than she remembered, facedown on a table and a very unimpressed pink octopus dressed so poshly that it was a surprise no one had mugged him yet. Koshi had her reserves about calling attention to them, but Jane had no such qualms.

"Hey! Idiot! Your ride's here." 

Squirt looked up, startled, before realizing who had called out and rolling his eyes. "Lunatic." Jane only laughed.

"Come on, Octo-boy. You know you love me." She winked as she grabbed Pinto from under his arms "Besides, without me, who would help you get this shining example of temperance out of here?" She grunted as she attempted to drag a very passed out Pinto out of his seat. "Oh, cabbage, he got fat."

 Koshi cringed before stepping forward and grabbing Pinto's feet. No way she would leave Jane to deal with his heavy butt on her own. "On the count of three. One, two, three." With a large amount of wobbling and swearing, they managed to drag Pinto off of his bar stool and into the backseat of their car with a very fed up Squirt.

"Jane?" He moaned, "Can we switch seats? He's drooling on me!"

Jane scoffed. "Yeah, you wish. How did he get this drunk anyways?"

Squirt slumped down in his seat and crossed his tentacles, "You don't want to know." 

Jane shook her head, "I bet I don't." The rest of the ride back to their apartment passed in relative silence, and when they got back, Jane, not wanting to carry Pinto up six flights of steps, "borrowed" a sled she had found in the laundry room and tied Pinto to it with hers and Squirt's jackets before just leaving Pinto and the sled in the middle of the apartment and collapsing onto her part of the trundle bed, Koshi doing the same, as both of them simultaneously realized they still had a guest to entertain.

"Oh! Squirt!" Koshi leapt out of her bed like it had burnt her. "Won't you sit?" 

"Er, thank you?" He sat down on Koshi's bed and folded his tentacles.

"You want anything?" Jane asked as she went to their mini fridge and pulled out a bottle of wine. "Koshi got this from Boston. It smells weird, so it must be something you'd like." Squirt chuckled as Jane poured him a glass.

"Ooh, looks delightful."

Jane cocked an eyebrow at him. "Are you sure? It smells like someone burped after drinking grape juice." Squirt only laughed harder. He was always so patient.

"Here, Jane." He took a mug from the bedside table with a spare tentacle and poured half of his glass's contents into it. "Try this with me. It won't be as bad as you think." Jane gave him a wary stare. Squirt stared back. "Jane Margot, you have drank half a bottle of drain cleaner and survived. This will be nothing." A vague memory glowed in the back of Koshi's mind. When they were kids, Squirt had pleaded for Pinto to at least try the Vegimals' new seaweed butter, since peanut butter couldn't be kept on the Octopod because a certain someone (Shellington) was allergic to it. The unearthing of one memory led to more recollections of the life she had lived before floating to the surface, and the old, familiar sadness began to stir.

So much had changed in such little time: one day, they were children, zipping around the Octopod to their hearts' content, the next, teenagers, climbing on top of the Octopod in the dark of the night, which is where they ended up as the sun began to rise. 

As they warmed their chilled morales with thoughts of times gone by, the sun peered shyly over the horizon, washing the less savory end of San Francisco in its brilliant glow. The three of them lay on the cold cement roof, paw in tentacle, soaking in every tendril of time they had together. Soon, it would be morning, and their glorious night, like the life that they had shared on the Octopod, would be lost to the sands of time, only to exist in their mind's eye.